


Shaping

by CompletelyDifferent



Series: Steven Universe One-Shots [23]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CompletelyDifferent/pseuds/CompletelyDifferent
Summary: Pearl rebuilds herself to be who she wants- and needs- to be.





	

Pearl was built to be pretty.

Pretty. Elegant. Graceful. Smooth. Shining. Delicate.

Fragile.

oOoOo

Pearl builds herself to be hard.

Not strong. Physical strength is an impossibility that she has resigned herself to. Her body has limitations that she cannot change.

There are others that she can.

She studies. Practices. Trains. _Works_. 

She hones every part of herself into a weapon. She tweaks her physical form to perfection. She does not have strength, but she has speed, she has agility, she has grace, she has surprise. Sharpest of all, she has her mind.

From the core of herself, she forges a weapon. A spear. It is pretty and it is elegant, but it is anything but delicate. It is unyielding.

oOoOo

Pearl shapes herself to be soft.

Over the eons, she has taught herself to be many things. To speak up. To stand tall. So engineer. To pilot. To experiment. To fight. To strategise. To lead.

She expects this to be more difficult than any of that.

Gems are not parents. They don’t have the instincts for it— for caring, for teaching, for mothering. There’s no instruction manual to follow. And unlike with sword fighting, she won’t have Rose Quartz to guide her.

And how can she learn to be any of those things, Pearl wonders, and worries, when she’s certain she’ll look at the child and just see the empty space where Rose should be?

But strangely enough, it doesn’t come so hard at all.

The baby smiles, and she smiles back. He cries, and she soothes. He sleeps, and she watches.

She grieves, and she fusses, and she cares, and she laughs, and she teaches, and she learns, and she mothers.

Once, she made her hand hard and calloused, to hold a sword hilt.

Now she makes it soft and gentle, to hold Steven’s. 

**Author's Note:**

> Went on a plane trip, got stuck on the runway for twice as long as the flight itself was gonna be, whipped up a one-shot while I waited.


End file.
